- Genre
- Wonder tale
- Source status
- variant tradition
- Motifs
- magic pot, sweet porridge, mother and daughter, unknown stopping command, overabundance
The tale: an editorial retelling
A mother and daughter lived together. They had become so poor that one day there was nothing left to eat. The daughter went into the forest, where she met an old woman.
The old woman said that she knew the girl’s trouble. She gave her a little pot and explained that, once it was set down, she need only tell it to cook. It would fill with sweet porridge, giving mother and daughter something to eat.
The girl thanked her and took the gift home. She set it down and said, “Little pot, cook!” It immediately began bubbling, and more and more porridge appeared. When it was full, the girl told it to stop cooking. The pot became quiet, and both women ate their fill.
Several days passed. Once, while the daughter was away somewhere, her mother decided to tell the pot to cook herself. The porridge rose, reached the rim and began spilling over.
The mother did not know how to stop it. Porridge filled one room, then another, flowed into the yard and kept spreading. Before long the entire village was flooded with sweet porridge. Who knows what would have happened if the girl had not returned?
As soon as she came home, the girl told the pot that it had cooked enough. Only then did it stop producing more porridge.
But the porridge already spilled did not disappear. It left the villagers with a problem: anyone wishing to go out on foot or in a cart first had to eat the porridge from the road. Otherwise there was no getting through.
About this version
The tale appears as No. 196, pp. 561–562, in Lietuvių tautosaka (Lithuanian Folklore), volume III (1965). The note on p. 674 says V. Basanavičius recorded it in Ožkabaliai village, Vilkaviškis county, in 1905; its archive reference is LMD I 133(215). The note does not name an informant.
The retelling preserves the complete sequence, including the villagers eating porridge from the road at the end. The porridge does not magically disappear. In the source, the old woman explains how to start the pot, while the girl is the first to speak the stopping words; no additional teaching scene has been supplied here.
Telling and discussing the tale
You can tell the mother’s episode through an expanding view: pot, rooms, yard, village. Ask listeners how knowing how to start something differs from knowing how to stop it. Notice that a mistake in one household affects all its neighbours in this tale.